It was a performance reminiscent of Elway, the former Stanford quarterback who is expected to become the Denver Broncos’ chief football executive this week. He served as an honorary captain, and ex-Stanford QB Jim Plunkett was also on hand to lend support.

The Cardinal (12-1) likely will end the season ranked in the top 5 for the first time since the unbeaten 1940 team finished No. 2. Their success comes only four years after they went 1-11 and hired Harbaugh as coach to lead a turnaround.

In the over/under, if you took the under, then my friend, you won big on this game!

Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators are the National Champions of college football, knocking off the Oklahoma Sooners by a score of 24-14.

Now the question remains…are they the undisputed National Champions? What about USC, Texas, Utah. I’m sure after a less than impressive Florida victory tonight, each school will have their say tomorrow morning.

Tim Tebow gave Florida the jolt it needed, and the Gators toughed out a second BCS title in three years.

Their 24-14 win over No. 2 Oklahoma in a choppy, sloppy affair Thursday night made them a national champion. But it did little to quiet fans of Southern California, Utah and Texas, all of whom already claimed the top spot.

The high-scoring shootout between Heisman Trophy winners never materialized. Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford couldn’t score from in close and Tebow threw two interceptions, as many as he had all season.

Why not have an 8 team playoff to end the season? The matchups would be great, the ratings would be high, and we could have an undisputed champion at the end of the season. What’s not to love about that?

Sure, we could still have bowl games, but let’s make the bowl games actually mean something. 7 games would need to be played so we take 7 of the top bowls: Sugar, Rose, Fiesta, Orange, Cotton, Gator and how about the Capital One Bowl. You can rotate the championship game each year and we can settle all disputes on the field.

Let’s take the National Championship out of the hands of the computers and put it back on the field, where it belongs. Thoughts?

The Hall of Famer and winningest coach in major college football history has agreed to a new deal with the university, the athletic department said Tuesday in a statement.

The agreement will provide “for the opportunity of Coach Joe Paterno leading the football program through the 2011 season,” the statement said. JoePa turns 82 on Sunday.

“It was also agreed that the parties might reevaluate their circumstances and alter the arrangement by either shortening or extending its length as necessary,” the statement said.

The agreement ends months of speculation about Paterno’s future since his current deal had expired following this season. University president Graham Spanier and Paterno had announced in the spring that Paterno didn’t need something in writing to stay on a job he’s had a record 43 years.

Yet contract questions still dogged both sides until Nov. 22, when Paterno said after the Big Ten title-clinching win over Michigan State that he planned to return in 2009.

“We’re ready to get back to work to get ready for the 8th,” Bradford said. “When we started this season, winning the national championship was the first goal we put down as a team.”

Next month’s game between Oklahoma and Florida marks the second time Heisman winners will play against each other. The first was in the 2005 Orange Bowl, when ’04 winner Matt Leinart and Southern California beat ’03 winner Jason White and Oklahoma for the national title.

Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford arrived in Norman three years ago with modest hype and low expectations. The Sooners’ coaches acknowledged that they had recruited him for depth behind Rhett Bomar, who had been the country’s top quarterback prospect.

But Bradford’s rise from relative obscurity to national pre-eminence was sealed Saturday night when he won the Heisman Trophy, which is given annually to the country’s most outstanding college football player.

Bradford, a redshirt sophomore, seemed giddy and overwhelmed as he hugged his parents and his coach, Bob Stoops, and shook hands with a row of former Heisman winners.

“I was definitely surprised,” Bradford said. “I think it was everything I imagined. It’s going to take a few weeks for it to sink in.”

His victory did not come without a dash of drama. Bradford edged Texas quarterback Colt McCoy in the voting, 1,726 to 1,604, in the closest finish since Eric Crouch beat Rex Grossman by 62 points in 2001.

In a sign of how top-heavy the balloting was, McCoy’s second-place total was high enough to have won four of the past eight Heismans.

“Now I know what it’s like for those people on ‘American Idol,’ ” McCoy said. “My heart was pounding. What a great experience.”

The third-place finisher, Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, received more first-place votes than Bradford (309-300), becoming the first third-place finisher to do so since 1956. That did not seem to matter to Tebow, who last season became the first sophomore to win the Heisman.

“You lose, you lose,” he said with a smile. When told he had been left off 154 of the 904 ballots, Tebow added, “Either they love us or they hate us — that’s Florida.”

A member of Congress, from Texas, plans to introduce legislation that would force college football to adopt a playoff to determine the national champion. Hey, I’ve always said, I’m all for an NCAA playoff in Division 1 college football! This year is a prime example of how great a postseason could have been.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, didn’t specify what sort of playoff he wants — only that the BCS should go.

“In some years the sport’s national championship winner was left unsettled, and at least one school was left out of the many millions of dollars in revenue that accompany the title,” Barton said in a statement released ahead of the bill’s introduction. “Despite repeated efforts to improve the system, the controversy rages on.”

He said the bill — being co-sponsored by Reps. Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat, and Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican — “will prohibit the marketing, promotion, and advertising of a postseason game as a ‘national championship’ football game, unless it is the result of a playoff system. Violations of the prohibition will be treated as violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act as an unfair or deceptive act or practice.”

The BCS was created in 1998 by the six most powerful conferences. Since then, the system has been tweaked to make it easier for teams from smaller conferences to qualify for the top games. The sites for the four BCS bowls – the Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta – take turns hosting a championship game between the top two teams in the BCS standings, which are based on two human polls and six computer ratings.

This season, Florida (12-1) and Oklahoma (12-1) will meet in the BCS title game Jan. 8 in Miami.

Yes, you are currently 12-0, one of just a few undefeated teams left in college football. You are having a great season. So, why in the world would you turn down the opportunity to play Boise State in the Humanitarian Bowl? Yes, the game will be played on Boise State’s home field, the so called “Smurf Turf”, but you are missing out on a GREAT opportunity! Not just for your school, but for all of College Football!

Jason King had a great posting on Yahoo! Sports discussing this very topic. I’ve posted some of it below. Does anybody have any thoughts on this decision by Ball State?

A few days after Ball State finished the regular season with a 12-0 record, folks around the Mid-American Conference began referring to the Cardinals as one of the best teams in league history.

Hogwash.

Elite programs don’t cower in corners when faced with a challenge, which is exactly what Ball State did Wednesday when it declined an invitation to play Boise State in the Humanitarian Bowl.

The game would’ve been one of most intriguing matchups of the postseason. Both 12-0, the Broncos and Cardinals are the only two undefeated teams in college football that won’t be playing in a BCS Bowl.

Yes, the Humanitarian Bowl is played on the Broncos’ home field in Boise, but that shouldn’t matter. The stadium would’ve been packed, television ratings would’ve been huge. Win or lose, the Cardinals would’ve received a level of exposure their program has never known.

Unfortunately, though, the game will never happen.

The Cardinals were too scared.

In some ways it wasn’t difficult to understand Ball State’s position. Coach Brady Hoke had plenty of legitimate reasons for wanting to steer clear of the Humanitarian Bowl.

With the economy in such turmoil, Hoke realizes that many Ball State fans would not make the 1,900-mile trek from Indiana to see the Cardinals play Boise State, which is just two years removed from its upset of Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.

Even more daunting was that the Broncos are 35-3 in three seasons under Chris Peterson. Over the last 10 years they tout the best winning percentage in all of college football.

Simply playing Boise State is tough enough. Doing so on its home turf would’ve been an even taller task.

Still, the challenge – the opportunity – is one that most up-and-coming programs would welcome. Pat Hill’s “any-time-any-place” approach helped Fresno State earn a reputation as one of top non-BCS programs in college football. Even in their down years, the Bulldogs are admired for being fearless. People respect them.

Right now, not too many people respect Ball State.

Yes, the Cardinals are 12-0, and it’s true Ball State has one of the top three or four quarterbacks in college football in Nate Davis. But take a look at its schedule.

The Cardinals’ 12 opponents are a collective 54-88. Only three of them finished with a winning record. Ask any Ball State diehard, and they’ll tell you the team’s marquee victory came against in-state rival Indiana, which went 3-9.

The bottom line is that people still want to see if Ball State is for real. All season long, fans and notable alums have complained that media-types and voters haven’t given the Cardinals their due, but it’s tough to shower too much praise upon a program that displays such cowardice the one time they have a chance to face a quality opponent.

In trying to save face by avoiding a potential butt-kicking in Boise, Ball State actually made itself look worse. Humanitarian Bowl executive director Kevin McDonald called the situation “unfortunate for college football.”

Unfortunate? Try embarrassing. Not just for Ball State, but for the Mid-American Conference, too.

MAC Commissioner Rick Chryst should’ve done everything in his power to convince Ball State to accept the H-Bowl’s invitation. His failure to do so makes his league look small-time in comparison to non-BCS conferences such as Conference USA, the Western Athletic Conference and the Mountain West.